If America is going to fare better than Europe in halting the
development of a de facto sharia society, the unabashed efforts of
Muslims who understand the unique value of America’s legacy of
liberty will be crucial. Estimates indicate that more than half of
American Muslims are quietly appreciative of constitutionally
guaranteed individual rights. The challenge lies in persuading them
to take a public stand.

The stage is now set for all freedom-supporting Muslims to step up
and counter the Islamic Circle of North America as it rolls out its
$3 million campaign to convince Americans that the goals of sharia
law and the objectives of the United States Constitution are one and
the same. As enunciated in a fatwa by the Islamic Fiqh Council of
North America, which interprets Islamic law for this continent,
Muslim authorities claim there is “no inherent conflict between the
normative values of Islam and the US Constitution and Bill of Rights”
(emphasis added). The proclamation also asserts that “secular legal
systems in Western democracies generally share the same supreme
objectives, and are generally compatible with Islamic Shari’ah”
(emphasis added).

The ICNA campaign to soften sharia for American consumption is based
on dizzying historical spin, as demonstrated by Zulfiqar Ali Shah
(also known as Al Fokkar Ali Shah and Tho Al Fokkar Ali Shah), the
former president of ICNA and current executive director of the Fiqh
Council of North America. His showcase essay, “Founding Father’s
[sic] of America’s Indebtedness to Islamic Thought,” makes the
specious argument that John Locke, the authority behind much of the
Founding philosophy, had a “political outlook [that] closely
resembled the Islamic teachings.”

For evidence, Shah sprinkles into his fable some odd incidentals,
like the assertion that the inquisitive Locke owned a copy of the
Koran and had friends who were Muslims or Muslim sympathizers — as if
these happenstances could prove that Locke was “greatly influenced by
Muslim philosophers.”

Shah fabricates whole cloth out of scraps of conjecture extracted
from John Locke: Resistance, Religion, and Responsibility, by
Professor John Marshall, an outlier in the Lockean-scholarship camp.
Shah tries to use Marshall’s material to support his claim that Locke
rejected the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. According to Shah’s
tortured construction, rejection of belief in the tripartite God
implies sympathy with broader Islamic teaching. Yet Marshall noted
that there was “no sign that Locke ever felt able to assert that
there could not be three infinite persons of the Godhead in only one
infinite space,” and he remarked that Locke’s observations were
not “invested with Socinian purpose.”

Still, from the report of Locke’s investigation of Socinianism, an
anti-trinitarian doctrine, Shah bootstraps the notion that Locke
was “an outright Socinian” and “denounced fundamental Christian
dogmas such as Trinity, Jesus’ divinity, Original Sin, Ecclesiastical
authority, biblical inerrancy and salvation through the redemptive
death and crucifixion of Christ.”

Tellingly, Shah steers clear of the salient themes of Locke’s essays
on government, natural law, and liberty. For where Locke directly
contradicts sharia tenets is in his very principled defense of
ordered liberty, popular sovereignty, rights of conscience, and a
civil government whose purpose is the protection of individual life,
liberty, and property. These foundational components of the
Declaration of Independence are all on a collision course with
arbitrary clerical judgments, theocratic statism, discrimination
against women, and disregard for basic civil and religious rights.

In the light of these truths, Shah’s most dishonest avowal comes at
the conclusion of his essay on the purported debt that the Founders
owe to Islam, where he declares that “the American dream [of] ‘Life,
Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness’ is a summarized version of the
five objectives of Islamic Shari’ah . . . incorporated by John Lock
[sic] in his Treatises.”

Shah (under the variant “Zululfokka Shah”) is also listed as a
scholar associated with the Assembly of Muslim Jurists of America.
This committee of Islamic sharia experts, “established in response to
the growing need of an Islamic jurisprudence specific to Muslims in
the West,” has issued a 47-page manifesto (analysis and translated
excepts here; also, an efficient overview by scholar Andrew Bostom
here). Presented at a conference in Houston in 2008, the document
teaches highest allegiance to Islamic law and reveals fundamental
disregard for the American Constitution as Muslims are instructed on
the fine points of living and governing under infidel systems,
applying man-made law, and working as judges or lawyers.

To the Muslim who must act as a judge applying law other than sharia,
the document encourages defiant judicial activism, directing him
to “rule by [sharia] in every case brought before him, or at least as
close as he’s able.” Muslim judges ruling under infidel law are
admonished “to increase the good and decrease the bad as much as
possible.” If a Muslim judge follows the AMJA document’s injunction
to “in his heart hate the man-made law,” it is certain that his
judgments will reflect sharia standards, not the will of the American
people expressed as law made by their elected representatives.

The ICNA campaign to whitewash this activist and anti-constitutional
Islamist agenda must be challenged by thoughtful Americans as the
town halls that will be part of the campaign are convened. Even more
important, previously reticent Muslims should recognize the urgency
of confronting hard-line Islamist leadership.

America’s Muslims have the most to lose and so command the highest
credibility in this cultural debate. They must stand now to defend
America’s guarantees of individual liberty and equal rights. Western
Europe offers ample evidence of what life is like as pockets of
sharia societies spread.

Zuhdi Jasser, Irshad Manji, and other courageous Muslims have assumed
national leadership roles in the defense of American freedoms. For
all Muslims who have been inspired by their example, now is the time
to confront the totalitarian goals of those who work to impose sharia
by subterfuge.

— Karen Lugo is co-director of the Center for Constitutional
Jurisprudence and founder of the Libertas-West Project.